I’m pretty sure second–hand crazy is an actual occurrence.

My boss popped a small green valium and handed me one as well. I used my fingernail to cut it in half and saved the other half, as she’s often stingy with her pills. We were in the Atlanta airport after a four-day business trip and my lower back was killing me. I had slipped and fallen the night before because some asshole spilled their Budweiser in front of the elevator, but luckily my boss is prescribed a plethora of pharmaceuticals, which she carries with her at all times. Well, I’m not so sure “luckily” would be the correct word to describe her situation, but we’ll get to that later.

As my headphones blared, my boss (let’s from this point on call her Prozac Nation) pointed out that we were sitting next to one another on the flight and I couldn’t think of anything I would like more than to switch flights altogether… perhaps kill myself. While having a boss who doles out meds may seem like a pretty chill situation, one who cannot walk a straight line without stumbling and finish a sentence without mumbling is really hard to work with — especially when said person is your direct supervisor.

We boarded the plane and — although I simply cannot sleep on airplanes — I decide to wrap my head in my scarf and try, if nothing else than to discourage my boss to blabbing to me about her cats. I sat quietly with my boss to my left (and my head wrapped like a fashionable mummy) and didn’t peek out until I heard the flight attendant lock the drink cart next to me. I asked for just water so I could go back into hiding and Prozac Nation ordered a coke and a $5 bag of peanut M&Ms. I flipped through my magazine while I finished my water, eager to once more hide in my scarf and avoid imminent annoyance. Meanwhile I noticed Prozac Nation had started to nod off — a pretty amusing debacle, until, that is, she finally passed out.

I was stoked to have gotten rid of her so early in the flight and thought that if only her pills would keep her knocked out, I could make it out of that plane alive. After having spent the past four days with her and all of her eccentricities, I was a ticking time bomb — I also had to constantly remind myself that I had made up fake plans directly after our flight so I didn’t have to drive her home. I smiled smugly at the thought of my white lie and turned to my boss only to see her drooling on herself. I must at this point remind you that she had been drinking Coke-a-Cola and eating peanut M&Ms at the time her pills made her pass out, so a slimy, disturbingly brown substance had began to drip off her lip and created in a puddle on her pale pink v-neck sweater.

It was all I could do not to throw up at that point and I seriously questioned what I had done wrong in my life to, not only work for this person, but to have to sit beside this person whilst she soiled herself. I wanted to wrap my head back up — tout suite — but it was like a car crash: I couldn’t bring myself to look away. While I looked on in repugnance with an Elvis Presley snarl on my face, Prozac Nation, in her drugged sleep, wiped her mouth and realized she had been drooling. I quickly looked back to my magazine as she noticed the puddle of mud that had accrued on the space between her shoulder and her tits. She tried to wipe off the sickening substance — a sad expedition. Finally, I glanced over and caught her eye as she scrubbed at her sweater. Silent, she looked at me like, “what the fuck?” and pointed up as if the drool had magically dripped from part of the plane. I looked back at her as if to say "you wish," pointed to my mouth and nodded my head no.

 “Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked.

 “Sorry, but I didn’t realize you were soiling yourself,” I responded, as I counted down the minutes until I could escape this crazy woman (and likely my own demise, as secondhand crazy seems to be on the horizon). Then, I began once more to wrap up my head in my scarf , as she, with no concept of how long she had been asleep (20 minutes tops), popped yet another valium.